Ilberg, Andreas

Abstract [en]

Democracy has been a part of the Swedish society for a long period of time and it is also a part of the Swedish elementary school curriculum, in which you can find a number of statements that expresses that the Swedish elementary school should socialize the children into becoming role model citizens. This also conjures with the available research that describes schools in general as socializing. This led me to a question that hasn’t been answered: How much of the curriculums reasons for socialization the pupils are based on democratic values and how much of it can be dated back to events prior to the curriculum?

The methodological approach is an analysis of ideologies as described by Sven-Eric Liedman and Ingemar Nilsson in Ideologi och ideologianalys. The text is focusing on the fact that a text has two layers; one is the manifest which is roughly the same as explicit or present in the text. The other layer is the latent, which is a part of the texts meaning that is indeed present but it doesn’t show until you analyse the text in the company of a valid context, in my case the context is going to a text about political socialization and a brief review of curriculums different contexts. The essay, then, is consisting of 6 different cases consisting of a brief context and an analysis of a curriculum. The chosen curriculums are from 1919, 1955, 1962, 1969, 1980 and 1994.

The study showed that a part of the curriculums reasons for socializing the pupils are based on democratic values which can be found in every curriculum that I’ve studied. The study also showed that the curriculums that I’ve studied are also partly consisting of opinions that can be dated back to events that occurred years prior to the curriculum.